DotA Article by World No. 1 Team

This is the article by the world top player Virtus.NS

What really owns?

So, what really owns now, and makes one team win over another? I decided to think over these questions from my point of view. You can discuss skirmishes, pushes, defenses, strategies and farming as much as you want – but to me, there are two answers – stuns and blinks. Why is this the case?

1. Stun

Lets go back in time for about 2-3 years, when me and a lot of other (russian) DotA-players assembled at blizzard.ru. At that time local players invented the “mass stun” strategy, something like Centaur+Maiden+Sven+Silencer(when he had golems)+Panda(no stun but clap owned). Those guys just calculated the damage from stuns, taking away hero resistance, and understood that at lvl 7 no hero can survive, which means that it owns! At that time nobody understood why it worked so good, stun is not only damage and the possibility for another hero to stun, but it also gives you time for physical damage output – by just attacking.

At present this is obvious, and this is strong. Even the shortest stuns(0.5 sec for example) you can strike one more time and strafe to make 1-2 more strikes. So – as the longer the stun is, the more strikes and more strafes you can make. A hero with 600 range that begins attacking his target at melee range can do a lot of damage before the target runs away. Of course, this depends on move speed of both heroes, animation of the attacker, both heroes items and other factors, but the fact remains certain – ranged heroes with stun can do a lot of damage after the stun finishes – strafing and striking again. Why VP (not only VP now) usually win their lanes is because we had this knowledge – we were the first to learn how to do this, we abused it early and still abuse it now. Some teams shared our experience, MYM was even using "our"strategies. The benefit of stun is that while target is stunned u can strike it, and most of damage in DotA before 5x5 battles begin is done by hands(except some Power Nukers like Zeus, Lina, Lion and few more),so in any 1x2, 2x2 battle stun damage does not do much effect – its duration is much more important.

2. Blink

Accordingly– the best counter to stun is blink. Blink can save you from almost anything that can be a threat to you in DotA - there are a lot of different spells in DotA except stuns, and most of them can be avoided using blink. Blink is a counter to any of your rivals plans, if your enemy does not have blink, and you do - it becomes really imbalanced.

So,it is consistent that heroes that have blink as a skill are extremely powerful – they don’t have to waste 2150 and slot to buy dagger and even more abnormal and strange is that those heroes have powerful spells - by these heroes I mean Queen of Pain and Priestess of the Moon(also Puck red.). There are a lot of heroes that neither have nukes nor blink – and I don’t see what use you can make of them. Also any hero only with a nuke – Death Prophet for example – is a lot worse than hero with blink and at least one useful spell.

Another example of not so standard hero, that can be useful and even strong enough in some situations – morphling – owner of strange blink with high mana cost and big cd. It damages, but still is much less handy that QOP’s blink or POTM’s jump. But, even this strange hero comparing to DP is better –because he does have blink, though crappy one. It allows not only to escape, but to chase, that is very important too…

Antimage is rarely used in clan wars or tournaments - partly because people don’t want to generate new ideas and strategies, and because at present we play APXL mode that is a bit unfair for some heroes. AM just needs a lineup that can make some of the enemy heroes run – when that happens it's only the matter of time for Magina to kill them. Unfortunately, in APXL such heroes often get banned, or the opponent picks them – I mean different aoe-stunners-damagers, like zeus and warlock.

At Dota-Allstars.com people asked; why did MYM ban QOP and POTM when we(VP) had first pick in finals – while everybody knows, that MYM does have players that can play both of those heroes very well. The answer is obvious – they did not want us to pick either of these overpowered heroes. We, in our turn, were surprised by ourselves, how we didn't ban PotM when MYM had first pick.

Akasha can be a subject for separate discussion, because her blink, along with other her spells,makes her a really unique hero, so unique, that frankly speaking, she needs a lot of nerfing.

The only thing that absolutely counters blink dagger is hex, if we talk about the blink skill – hex and silence. Heroes with silence are almost useless (while puck is banned),heroes with hex are not any good either. Rhasta is strange hero, too little hp while his spells force him to be in the middle of the combat,and attempts to pick Lion – all of you have seen them, all of them were unsuccessful, neither our, nor MYM and KS. Maybe we did something wrong, but its more likely he is not strong enough for serious games.

At present time 90% of all heroes buy blink. Only those that don’t have to use a lot of skills during the fight don't need it, they just cast their spells at the start of the battle and after that they aren't as useful anymore, it doesn't matter for their team if they are dead or alive - warlock is a good example, he can play without blink dagger. A team with 5 blinks is almost always stronger than one with 3 blinks.

So,to counter blink which costs 2150 or only 60 mana if u have it as a skill – you need to buy guinsoo, which costs 3 times more! Balance? At least mana cost should be risen significantly.

Our team was the first to use mass-stuns and mass-blinks, it was the main reason we dominated half a year back, and it is the reason why we can’t win so easy now. Of course we have high-skilled players, and a good roster,but we are not cyborgs and not from Mars, currently there are guys that play on the same level. They shared our experience, and can now give us a battle, of course I speak about MYM first and foremost, but if nothing will change at competitive scene there will be about 10 more teams to conquer in near future.

3. Some observations

In the end I’d like to say few words about nukes. Heroes, that only nuke,without invis/stun/blink are useless with the only exception of zeus.All other nukers have stun or blink or both of them, sometimes invisibility - but invis is much less useful nowadays too. With the exception of NA of course, but he also has stun and the weapon of heavy harassment – mana burn. All other spell casters are never picked!

Today some guys asked me, what will be the new hype after mass-stuns and blink? A long time ago it was the mass-ults strategy (Faceless,Timestop/Magnus, Reverse Polarity) , later push-strategies (Chen,Syllabear), what will be the next big thing? And my answer is –nothing! Nothing will own, because if DotA doesn't change significantly– I mean changing the fact of blink and stun in DotA, which is already so familiar to us – there will be no better tactic, stun/blink/nuke will be the future of DotA for a long time.

Hope you enjoyed this article!

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Here is the reply by MYM.Maelk

While I agree with NS that Kelens Dagger of Escape needs a severe nerf, I don't think it neccesarily hurts the... wait for it... metagames(!) developement.

It is all about someone figuring out that a hero works especially well against the current... wait for it... metagame(!) thus slowly changing it by being a new pick to take into consideration. Within the past months Magnataur, Centaur Warchief, Nerubian Assassin, Stone Giant and Moon Rider has seen alot of play, basically taking over from where Faceless Void, Rogue Knight, Shadow Fiend and Sand King left off. While the latter is still being picked, one has to agree that their effectiveness has decreased a lot and aren't valued as dearly as earlier.

I predict that heroes such as Treant Protector will start to see a lot of use (Notice the Asian scene) as he somewhat eliminates the usage of blink if you have enough damage to put into the Overgrowth. He has, by far, the best multiple disable and does in my opinion exceed Magnataur in 5v5 combat. His weaknesses are obvious, though. Also, Faceless Void will be on a fast comeback and teams will wonder why they ever stopped using him. He still has a build in blink, works exceptionally well lategame, is a direct counter to Moon Rider and his ultimate also nullifies the usage of blink unless the opponent has really fast reactiontime.

Another thing that I see happening is teams playing the smart-card and starts pushing more than earlier. Despite the ton of heroes able to counter creep-pushing (Chen, Furion, Sylla), there are other variants and also a lot of ways to disguise a pushing-strategy. You don't even need any actually tankability and damage in form of creeps if your opponent is severely crippled in the 5v5/AoE-department. Mekanasm counters what little AoE they may have and while the enemy might pick one off using their single target spells, their entire team will fall going up against massive AoE-usage.

Although it is hard to think outside the box, because it is, with the obvious strengths of the currently usable heroes, I think it is time for mediocre teams (as well as certain topteams) to make up strategies and playstyles of their own to really succeed. Victory surpasses anything, even being creative, and it is hard for teams to imagine that you can let the opponent away with having a wide array of the popular stun heroes or leave both Warlock, Magnataur, Beastmaster and PotM in the pool. It takes practice and almost always more coordination than the opponents, going for the standard picks, but in the end I think it pays off.

A thing to keep in mind when letting a lot of the most popular heroes in the pool go to the opponent, is that these popular heroes often depends on being solo-lane. When is the last time you saw a Queen of Pain having a lane-buddy? Priestess of the Moon can work, yes, but it isn't neccesarily strong as her manapool is very limited and she relies heavily on hitting her arrow. Warlock is a pain when babysitting their lategame, but also means he won't get any items himself and certainly never the feared Book o Necromicon (3). Magnataur doesn't oppose a threat on any lane before hitting level 6, he, too, needs fast levelling and the option to farm a fast blink dagger as he is easily avoidable without one.

Teams could build up strategies revolving certain heroes like Magnataur or Treant Protector, with massive 5v5 input while the opponent is stuck without being able to use blink, using Crystal Maiden, Enigma, Juggernaut, Moon Rider, Lich - The list goes on - And could beat just about anything as long as they make sure not to fall behind in lategame.

The banning process is often more important than anything, if done right, but most teams simply removes heroes they find imbalanced and hard to play against instead of looking at what suits their playstyle and opposes the biggest threat to their winning chances. Bristleback is rarely the reason teams lose. 3 games have I seen Bristleback win, all played by my own team, and every single game Shadow Priest was the reason to his success, not the Bristleback itself. At the same time, Shadow Priest is an obvious counter-pick to Bristleback, should a team ever option to actually pick him. They go as a pair.

The reason we, in MYM, are always removing heroes such as Bristleback, Spectre, Terrorblade, Syllabear, Moon Rider and so forth, is because we play on a level where we feel we can only lose if the opponents gets to farm up one of these major lategame threats. Had there been more competition at our level, and we felt pressured to make up new and unforseen strategies, our bans would be completely different. Notice how we never ban any of these heroes against Virtus Pro - We simply have more important things to worry about.

To sum it up: I encourage teams to be themselves - Find out what suits them best and try your way with different things that works for you. Watching a replay from one of the topteams, then copying their picks, won't neccesarily mean you are better off than by using your own style. A lot, if not all, strategies can work if practiced enough. An example of this is tN from Russia who used a Strength Morpling to lane with Lina and a Sylla/Viper lane using the bear exceptionally well through scouting. I will go as far as saying they gave us the most resistance throughout the groupstage despite the other teams using the cookie-cutter strategies of today including such teams as sBack and OKHO if I am not mistaken.